


Bitter Savour of Remembered Sweet

by HMSTemeraire



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Everything Was Beautiful and Everything Hurt, Inconvenient Flashback, James (Clark Ross) in a Dress, M/M, Ross's Antarctic Expedition, Shades of Fitzier Looming on the Horizon, Whump? In my Crozier Fanfiction?, it's more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 23:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18398849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSTemeraire/pseuds/HMSTemeraire
Summary: A memory long quieted beneath the stern will of Francis's resolve had found purchase in Sir John’s careless words."To see you thus, Francis, I would carry the men still further south."Francis Crozier remembers another season in the ice--and James Clark Ross.





	Bitter Savour of Remembered Sweet

“Only wait, Francis—in a few months’ time we shall ring in the New Year as Ross did in the Antarctic,” Sir John declared, smiling over his glass. “With such exuberance, the sun will have no choice but to rise, hmm?”

Francis forced himself to nod in return. He could feel the eyes of the other officers on him—inexperienced all, and already tentatively storing away hopeful words and empty promises as if to insulate themselves from the cold. 

Francis was not a man to dole out hope, not before dire need cut so deeply to the quick there was nothing else to grasp at. Like warmth, it was an energy lost in the giving, and damnably difficult to recover.

Besides, a memory long quieted beneath the stern will of his resolve had found purchase in Sir John’s careless words.

 _To see you thus, Francis, I would carry the men still further south._  

The effect was immediate, a keen pang sharpened to a point by the rough handling of time. He attempted to conceal his shoulders’ stiffening with a cough. 

He saw, more than heard, Fitzjames speaking the silence into submission with his hands. They were not unlike James Clark Ross’s, long and elegant. Expressive. His own, trembling slightly, carried his whisky to his lips to chase away the thought.

 _Exuberant_ was a tasteful word, gilding the prayer that desperate year in the Antarctic had forced from their numb lips. Who had broached the subject of a ball Francis could not recall, only his surprise that Ross’s features, hardened from facing the season’s unrelenting difficulties, had broken into a smile at the idea.

A smile like the dizzying sparkle of sunlight on untouched snow. To stare for too long would be to court blindness.

But the eyes are drawn, Francis had found, to the bright and the dazzling with little thought to the aching absence that will follow.

With Captain Ross’s blessing, the immense Antarctic silence was for a time shattered by men finding cause for laughter in their efforts to fashion a ballroom floor from the very ice imprisoning their ships. Francis had watched from the _Erebus_ ’ cabin, absentmindedly worrying at his epaulettes. The crews deserved a show of cheer from their commanders, but day after day without sun had left its bruises on his spirit.

He turned at the familiar approach of Ross’s footsteps, steeling himself with a deep breath. If he could make merry for anyone, it was for the friend who had delightedly teased his “indefatigable Irish melancholy” into submission since their days on the _Hecla_.

“Will you do me the honor of stepping out with me, Captain Crozier?” He scarcely heard the question, staggering in the wake of a mind sent reeling by the sight of his formidable captain cutting a neat curtesy in a gown that rustled and rasped with his every movement.

Francis could feel that sound against the back of his throat, even now. Could feel, even now, an echo of the sharp pang in his stomach at the sight of Ross’s unruly dark hair, grown long in their time South, elegantly loosed over his bared shoulder. 

Looking on from the privileged heights of hindsight—fixing his eyes on his plate as Franklin carried on—Francis wished he could have recognized that the color in Ross’s cheeks, his shining eyes, were as much from drink as excitement. 

Wished he could tell his past self, stiffly buttoned in his dress uniform and tugging at the collar, that this—none of this—was for him. Never for him.

He had fumbled for words, his throat tight. He wondered, faintly, at the revelation of a tapered waist set off by full skirts gathered at the hips.

When he finally managed to speak, his voice was a thick rasp: “Won’t you be cold?” Far from the tone of amusement he had hoped for. Fumbling evidence of care that he wished he could stifle in the careless gestures that seemed to come so easily to other men. 

Ross tossed his head, his laugh a cavalier, clear bark against Francis’s muddled emotions. “Not with you on my arm, I daresay.”

Had he flushed? Had he managed a laugh, a bluff retort? Francis could not remember breathing in the heady rush of activity set in motion the moment Ross linked his arm in his. 

Head whirling, he searched for Ross’s eyes. A still point to center his upended universe. “James…”

But his captain was already leading him to the deck, explaining as coolly as if they were discussing rations that it would do the men good to see their commanders at ease.

Far from ease, Francis could feel nothing but the desperate pound of his heart against his ribs. Following Ross up the hatchway, he could see where the bodice’s laces pulled tight across his broad back, the muscled curve of his shoulder blades visible above the taut fabric.

“James,” he tried again. Ross paused, turning to face him. The chill night air would have taken Francis’s breath away, if he had had any left to spare. In the dim twilight of the deck, draped in sailcloth in an attempt to keep the cold at bay, all he could discern were the glitter of Ross’s eyes through the gentle clouds of his breath.

A dozen questions vied for his attention, but in the end he could only ask, helplessly, “Do you think it wise, this?”

“I find it is novelty that ensures the success of any polar entertainment, be it ever so humble,” Ross said, spreading his hands before him, a hint of a sheepish grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “And I thought the dress looked rather fetching. 

Francis couldn’t help but smile at that, releasing the breath he had been holding in a soft snort. “Far be it from me to disagree, Sir.” 

Ross groaned. “Oh come, none of that.”

“None of what, _Sir_?” The innocence he affected collapsed when Ross closed the distance between them to swat him gently on the shoulder. Francis put on a show of looking affronted, though he relished the touch.

“I want the truth from you now,” Ross persisted, smoothing his skirts.

“The truth?” Francis frowned. The thought crossed his mind, swift as a shadow, how easy it would be to catch Ross’s hand in his. The truth was somewhere there, an inarticulate need, demanding yet ashamed. A hand outstretched in the dark.

“I trust you,” he murmured, finally. The words had come but, uttered aloud, felt too fragile for all he had intended them to carry. 

Ross’s soft laugh, an exhalation of relief, punctured the hush of seriousness that had fallen over them. “If the admiralty rewarded deference, Francis, you would have Barrow out of a job.”

 _Deference_ stung, but he could not bear to lose the thread of Ross’s pleasure. He cleared his throat, valiantly attempted a laugh. “I could hardly be so cruel. I would send him to the Pole—‘tis only fair.”  

“But we’ll have already found it.” With that single, firm declaration, Francis felt Ross return to the role of commander, dress notwithstanding. He nodded, as if to convince himself, and abruptly turned on his heel, motioning Francis to follow.

If Ross felt the cold, he showed no sign, even with a neckline that dipped well below his sharp collarbone. Francis tore his eyes away from their shadowed hollows to the sparkling torches of the icy ballroom floor.

Some of the men had caught sight of them, were beginning to set up a cheer that sent his determination to grin and bear the revels in dread retreat.

“Steady there, old boy,” Ross breathed into his ear. It felt of warmth and whisky, things Francis could have done with a great deal more of at that moment. With but one or the other, perhaps he may have been able to pull the man back into the quiet of belowdecks, into a warm darkness where he could sink to his knees and press the hem of that damnable dress to his lips—

Ross’s voice, softer now, cut through his hesitation. “Once more unto the breach—for me?” For the first time that strange night, he held Francis’s gaze, his eyes dark with unreadable feeling. Or rather, Francis daren’t try to read them. He knew too well what he wanted to find there.

He remembered, to his shame, that his hand supporting Ross’s arm had trembled, though not in fear of the approaching crowd. No, not of that.

A hand covered his, steadying and sure. Francis’s lips parted involuntarily, letting escape a too-taut breath. A fragile sound lost, blessedly, in the growing din of voices enlivened by drink and heavy boots scrambling over snow.

Ross was waiting for an answer. “For you—” _I daren’t contemplate what I wouldn’t do_ : the truth, bare and simple—all he could offer. 

But the confession died in Francis’s throat when Ross murmured, quickly now as the celebratory roar surrounded them, “Think of Miss Cracroft, if it helps.”

His brother, William, had once entreated him to climb a tree with him on the far end of the Banbridge downs when they were children, a great alder that loomed dark against the sky like a mast. He felt now as he had then, when a misplaced foot sent him falling through the indifferent branches to the ground: battered, dazed, breath tackled so harshly from his lungs he could only blink.

The sting of being so easily seen, the frustration of its _wrongness_ , curled him inward on himself. He had spoken little to Ross of Sophia.

Out here, he found the thought of her discordant. She was for the languid bliss of summer, heat that thickened the senses like opium smoke. He looked at the man he had been and could not help but cringe at the blinded fool, wandering with entreating hands outstretched through the haze.

In this land of cold and brutal clarity, his compass pointed elsewhere.

He blinked hard, now, against the wince of shame, recalling himself to _Erebus_. Dinner inspired Sir John to expansiveness and Lieutenant Irving, unaware he was being baited, had posed a polite question about Van Diemen’s Land that would receive a veritable litany for an answer.  

Exasperated and amused in equal measure, Francis glanced across the table with a furtive wink for Blanky. Instead, he met the eye of Sir John’s second.

Fitzjames was staring at him strangely—judging the empty glass in his hand, no doubt—though his studious look became one of alarm at the conspiratory wink. Francis’s immediate impulse was to look away, but a perverse desire to see the unflappable Fitzjames squirm made him hold his gaze.

Surprise swiftly gave way to the look of haughty pique that Fitzjames wore so often Francis was convinced he practiced it to perfection in his looking glass. Bringing his fork to his lips, Francis raised an eyebrow as if to ask, _Whatever is the matter?_  

The lines around Fitzjames’s mouth deepened, but he showed no sign of breaking away. Francis frowned to fend off the twitch of a smile playing at the corners of his own. With his head tipped slightly, his long dark hair and his air of confusion, Fitzjames looked for all the world like Neptune when the dog heard a whistle.

Francis was beginning to wonder how long he would be able to endure with equanimity the unsettling probity of the other man’s regard when an elbow, as if by accident, bumped against his arm.

He turned, directing his glare at Lieutenant Little, who to his credit managed to keep up the pretense of not having interrupted his captain’s staring match even as his cheeks flushed at his own insolence. Refusing to admit to himself that Edward had done him a favor, he gestured to Jopson for more whisky and trained his eyes on the wall just past Sir John’s shoulder. 

*** 

Dr. McCormick had announced them, rolling every R’s in Francis’s full name with an enthusiasm he otherwise saved for felling birds. He managed a smile and a stiff bow as the men clapped for “Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier and”—McCormick paused with relish— “Miss Ross!”

The cheers, stomps, whistles, and applause startled Francis, overwhelmed the voice in his head damning his eyes for not managing to look away as Ross curtseyed to the crowd. The grin that broke out was disarmingly boyish in its unabashed delight at such a warm reception.

Francis gave in, inexorably, to that smile, would have donned a dress and thrown himself prostrate on thin ice for that smile.

Once more unto the breach, then.

“Captain?” He turned to feel a flask discreetly pressed into his hand in the press of the crowd. The startling blue eyes of his young steward met his, smiling shyly. The boy had only been in his employ since the expedition began, but he already seemed to know, instinctively, when Francis required assistance but pride stayed his tongue.

“Thank you, Mr. Jopson,” He took a long, swift swig, the burn coaxing a hoarse laugh. “You are a credit to the profession, lad.”

Jopson ducked his head, carefully pushing a lock of hair from his forehead. “If you’ll permit me, Sir, I believe you’re to lead the dance.” One of the seamen near the steward overheard, calling out and setting the booted feet on the ice to stamping, demanding, in time.

The tendril of apprehension that bloomed in his stomach was stilled well enough now by another swallow. “Enough! You’re like to crack it,” he barked, though grinning now, joy getting to him as swiftly as the whisky when he found Ross’s bright eyes through the shuffle of bodies. 

He had been fond of dancing in his youth, a secret even young Jopson—so often his makeshift confessor when the drink loosened his tongue—did not know. But that had been before the ice had settled into his bones; heat was precious, no sense in wasting movement.

No fiddle whining for him to pick up his feet faster, faster, now. Only a determined hand-organ piping an uneven quadrille that sounded thin and absurd against the whistle and moan of the polar wind.

He could scarcely hear the music in any case. Every nerve in his body was attentively tuned to the miracle of his hand on Ross’s waist.

Dancing with him felt nothing so much like lying in bed when the drink was still fast upon him. Spinning, stunned, in a dark alive with too much movement. His boots slipped more than once on the uneven, slick floor and each time Ross’s hand tightened around his to steady him.

So often moved—painfully, violently, but always quietly—Francis had found time and again to his sorrow that he himself was not a mover of men. Even now, Ross surreptitiously led the dance, guiding his steps as he on the _Hecla,_ when Parry, determined to fashion his officers to be gentlemen, had pushed quiet Lieutenant Crozier into the arms of his pedigreed and charismatic midshipman.

The Navy seemed to abound in a certain kind of man—bluff, stoical, undaunted. Men like Ross, who rose in the ranks as swiftly as they had scaled the rigging as able seamen. Francis had improved in climbing since that youthful fall, but no hard practice was ever to attain him that natural ease.

Ross had once told him, teasing, that he made even pleasure look like hard work.

Pleasure lay painfully close, past the sharp edge of his anguish if he were so bold as to push through and surrender to it. To enjoy the simple delight of Ross, a warm, real weight in his arms, throwing back his head with a laugh as their audience raised another cheer and joined them in the dance.

Surrender came in the guise of Lieutenant McMurdo pressing another round on him. The quadrille blurred into a frenzied reel. Each pair at the head of the dance threw themselves down the lines with a running start, sliding as far as they could across the ice without losing their balance amidst encouraging shouts and howls of laughter.

Their turn arrived. Emboldened by drink, Francis winked at Ross and gathered up the other man’s heavy skirts in one hand before they broke into a run, arm in arm. The lines of men on either side of them clapped and stomped in time as they slipped past.

Flying, more like—or so it had felt for a delicious gasp of a moment to Francis before Ross had lost his balance and pulled them both down into a heavy heap of limbs and silk. 

He could feel their bodies shake with laughter. Let his hand linger on the bodice of Ross’s dress, rapidly rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath through gasps of mirth, before he stumbled to his feet to help Ross rise. Happiness was a gleam of land in the horizon he daren’t examine too closely lest it prove a trick of the light.

Cheers and a barrage of snowballs had pelted them from behind when they finally retreated to _Erebus_. Ross was singing “Where am I to Go, M’Johnnies” under his breath in time with the crew, though their voices were faint now that they were out of sight. Feet numb with cold and clumsy with drink, they stumbled against the side of the ship, groping for the snow-packed path. 

Francis paused to lean against the hull to pull at his woolen sock bunched under his heel with fingers made clumsy by the Antarctic air. “I should have trusted you,” he said, half to himself.

His smile faded when he saw that Ross had stilled. “I thought you did.” Ross turned to face him, brows furrowed. His exposed shoulders were red, shiny with cold. The sight of them made Francis wince, made him begin to remove his coat until Ross stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. “I never took you for a liar, Francis.” He said it lightly, but Francis saw how his smile, close-lipped, failed to reach his eyes.

“I do—trust you,” he said quickly, “You know how I feel about this sort of— _thing_.” He waved a hand over the light coming from the ballroom’s torches. “But it was what was most needed, I see that now. The men are like to fly us back to England at this rate.”

Ross’s face had not changed. “There is something I have been meaning to tell you,” he said finally. He squared his shoulders, all captain again, his voice grim. “We will make another go of it.” A command, not a question.

The blush of shame and confusion that had burned through Francis’s frozen cheeks drained away now. The utter impossibility of making such a demand on his _Terror_ , bruised and battered by months among the bergs—on his men, spirits whittled away by the cold—

That Ross could make such a demand on _him._ Yet another year in the ice. To face, again, the reality of a still death by that merciless, blank landscape.

Against every sound feeling that cried out against the idea of remaining in a place so painfully indifferent to life, however—every sensible nerve in his body quivering against the endless frigid damp—another longing threatened to win out.

That of asking nothing more of fate than to let him remain here, in this night. In the quiet warmth, however faint, of being needed.

“The men,” he began softly, “how do you think they will countenance it?”

“They must. They will. Don’t you see?” Francis swallowed his surprise when Ross seized his arms, closing the space between them in his fierce insistence. “We would be fools turn back now.” He clutched him harder, as if to convince him of his truth, and Francis could think of nothing more than a man drowning, pulling his lifeline under in his single-minded desperation to breathe.

He felt his back press against _Erebus’_ exposed hull _._ No way but forward.

“You have accomplished so much—”

“More awaits us still to be accomplished.” Francis recognized the set of Ross’s jaw, mouth pressed tight with impatience that he needed to explain what felt so patently clear. His lips were violet with the cold. Francis eyed them tentatively, tried to steady his breath in time with his reasoning.

“You have gotten closer to the Pole than any other man in history, James.” He despised the agitation tightening his voice. Any other man, he imagined, would follow their commanding officer’s orders without question. “Surely that is enough?”

Any other man with a sliver of ambition would have wanted more than “enough.” Always wanting, Francis had long ago inured himself to contentment with far less.

Ross scoffed, a sound that made Francis look away to conceal his flush of frustration. “Close? Close is nothing, Francis.” Ross shook his head with a bitter laugh. “Worse than nothing. No,” he ducked his head to find Francis’s averted gaze and smiled sadly, an unbearable pitying look, “No, it is not enough.”

If he would never, could never, be wanted, then Francis could only try to give others what they seemed to want. Twist himself into shapes that gave no offense, if little pleasure. So he had reckoned, in the hollow nights when he met the ceiling’s implacable gaze and wished his mind could be as clear.

He felt it, in his stricken heart, to be some inborn fault, inexorable, senseless to contest. The voice of that spiteful man in Van Diemen’s Land rang in his ears. That a stranger had managed to get the measure of him in a single, careless glance!— _Better suited for a second than a first._  

So it was, he feared, in the hearts of those he dared to love. Second, never first.

A kind of close worse than nothing.

“Will you stand by my decision, Francis?” Wind whickered through Ross’s skirts, pushing them with a quiet insistence against Francis’s unsteady legs.

He was so close.

Something inside of him seemed to move and unclose. He could not answer aloud. Before he could stop himself, with a reverence born of longing and shame mix’d, Francis pressed his lips to the place his eyes had sought all night.

His magnetic pole, the dusky hollow where Ross’s shoulder met his neck.

His skin was cold, unyielding. Always unyielding. It chilled his feverish lips. A taste of warning and succor all at once.

James Clark Ross had not secured his position of command by being a warm man. Personable, yes, and ready with smile, but it was a smile that held men at a careful distance. Francis had long admired him for it, but now he yearned for nothing more than to see the man undone as he was by him.

He breathed shakily against his neck as if to thaw it, driven by a desperate need beyond his control. He would give the other man all his warmth if he so demanded it. With a trembling mouth, he traced one heated line to Ross’s sharp jaw. Hesitated there, on the threshold of bliss or misery he could not be sure.

Ross had not moved, was scarcely breathing. Francis could not be sure if the other man’s hands had tightened around his tremulous arms. If he had leaned into his touch. He could not bear to look.

Apprehension drowned his senses; he’d been a fool to take advantage, a fool to lose his head over a dress, over leonine hair and steady hands.

Over eyes that seemed to see him.

“Have I done wrong, James?” A hoarse whisper scarcely steadying the sob in his throat.

To his surprise, Ross’s breath shuddered as his hand, sure as ever, found his face in the dark. Tilted Francis’s chin back to meet his half-lidded eyes. Ross’s calloused thumb whispered over his stilled mouth. “You mustn’t be afraid to lead, Francis.”

His shaking hands braced against the hull, scrabbling for purchase, as the full weight of Ross’s body pressed against him, leading from the unhesitating crush of Ross’s mouth against his. He sank under the kiss’s demanding pressure, his ragged moan turning into an open-mouthed invitation for its deepening, for Ross to push his warm tongue between his teeth.

Even as wanting gave way to the surrendering bliss of getting, of unmistakably having, what remained of Francis’s senses tore him away, panting, bewildered, from Ross’s touch. Nothing about this closeness felt real, this sudden heat amidst the frozen stillness. He realized his body was tense as a bowstring near to snapping, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Do you trust me?” Ross’s voice was low, rough with urgency, pupils blown with desire or anger, Francis could not say. The words hung, suspended, dangerous, in the unsteady inches between them. 

 _No._ The word resounded in Francis’s head with the clarity of a gunshot even as he tangled his hands in Ross’s thick hair in response, dragging him down to take his mouth again, hungrily. Biting Ross’s numb lip, hard, almost cruelly. Relishing the broken groan it drew from him and the responding pang of pleasure building, low in Francis’s stomach.

As if breaking the water’s surface for air, Ross pressed his wet mouth to his ear. As if he were whispering a grave secret. “To see you thus, Francis, I would carry the men still further south.”

He did not think of Sophia when thick skirts tangled about his legs, when his fingers brush against the dress’s strained laces on their way upward. Only Ross. Hair mussed, fine strands sticking to their lips. Rough hands tearing at his cravat. The insistent, bruising pressure of his sharp hips.

Canon fire and a wild cheer, too near, brought them crashing to a strained standstill, chests heaving. The interruption ached, drew a soft whine from Francis's throat. Ross pressed his damp forehead to Francis’s with a low huff of a laugh.

Blinking through heavy lids, he could see white fingerprints, bright and accusatory, on Ross’s ruddy neck and shoulders. Vivid traces where Francis’s hands had touched him.

Even now they were beginning to fade, the blood rushing back. Impermanent.

A thumb whispered against his wrist, beckoning him to follow, and he did without a word. As he would follow Ross anywhere. 

***

Sir John was mistaken. Despite their exuberance, the sun had not risen that day. Nor the next. And when _Erebus_ and _Terror_ had turned their prows northward, away from that implacable ice barrier that had served as their bleak horizon line for weeks on end, and the crews had shown an energy and initiative lacking of late, Francis had done his best to stifle the sickening coil of guilt in his heart that he would, soon, need to compel them to return to that cold. 

He felt only the ghost of bitterness now when he recalled that the Admiralty had wanted Ross to command this expedition. When he had learned that Ross, married and smarting (if one listened to the London whispers) after failing to plant the British flag on the Southern Pole, had declined, Francis was one of the few who were not surprised.

Nor did he allow himself to evince his frustration when the position of Second in Command was handed to Commander James Fitzjames, a man whose glaring inexperience was hardly made up for by his possessing in excess the foolhardiness demanded by Arctic exploration.

Barrow, Francis imagined, had perhaps been misled by the epithet that followed the younger man around as it had Ross: the handsomest man in the Navy.

The comparison, he thought, surreptitiously studying the other man’s features, did not fall in Fitzjames’s favor.

Though the delight that broke across Fitzjames’s face—as he made a gentle joke at Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s expense—lit him from within such that Francis felt himself warmed, irresistibly. He failed to hide his quiet smile when Fitzjames glanced at him, as if apologizing for the mirth he had spread across the table.  

They held each others’ eyes for a beat. Something like understanding, too heated to touch or examine more closely, passed between them. When they looked away, rising as Sir John bid the officers good night, Francis found to his surprise that he was still smiling.   

 _All goes smoothly,_ he had written to Ross on the eve of their departure North from his cabin on _Terror._ The cramped, dim space was more home than Francis could lay claim to elsewhere.   

He hesitated only briefly, eyes drifting to the dim twinkle of London’s lights through his porthole, before writing, _But, James dear, I am sadly alone, not a soul have I in either ship that I can go and talk to. No congenial spirit as it were._

Close enough to the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem, "The Death of Sir John Franklin." 
> 
> This story has been bouncing around my brain ever since I read Michael Palin’s "Erebus" and beheld That Portrait of the man, the myth, the legend, James Clark Ross. 
> 
> Apologies for any historical inaccuracies! For instance, history would lead us to believe that Ross was no stranger to crossdressing; join me in pretending that this was Francis’s first time seeing it happen. 
> 
> Fic best paired with Stan Roger's "Northwest Passage" and John Rzeznik's "I'm Still Here" on repeat. 
> 
> I’m utterly floored by the stunning fanfiction in the Terror fandom: thank you, all, for your incredible work.


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